Week 10—How to Cope with Unwanted Attention
This chapter is for survivors of sexual abuse or predatory behavior. Sexual abuse is one of the most consistent subconscious reasons I’ve seen amongst my clients to keep weight on and never let it go. The purpose of this chapter is to help you take your power back and live free from trauma, shame, and resentment. To help you live in a body that you have control over, a body that you are proud of. A body you love. A body that is your home and yours alone.
This is how weight loss, as strange as it might sound, can become a big, beautiful middle finger to an abuser who sought to rob you of your God-given peace and joy. Of your health. If this speaks to you, know that you no longer have to live in a cage built by someone else. You are worthy of being free. And it’s time.
A common belief in the subconscious minds of many sexual abuse survivors is:
•being physically big in size = being invisible to society
•being invisible to society = being safe
I have seen this again and again with clients over the years. Research backs it up. A study by the American Academy of Pediatrics found that women who were sexually assaulted as children had nearly double the likelihood of becoming obese as an adult.62
Another common revelation for many weight loss hypnotherapy clients is that a subconscious part of them desires to keep the weight on so they might be less attractive to their partners. To lose weight would mean getting more attention and more advances from their own spouse, and their subconscious would do anything to avoid that. Another subconscious fear is that of the temptation to cheat on their spouse if they were to become more attractive.
There is a lot to unpack here. It’s so much more than one chapter could ever cover because these subconscious beliefs are nuanced according to an individual’s history and current circumstances. If this chapter applies to you, if you have experienced abuse in your past, or if you suspect you may be subconsciously keeping the weight on as a way of either avoiding sex with your partner, from a fear of straying, or to feel invisible (and therefore safe), this week’s recording will be a welcome relief and a catalyst for tremendous healing.
When the subconscious is blocking weight loss it is because it believes it is unsafe to receive attention. How do we heal this? You might think it would be to condition the subconscious mind with the belief that the world out there is safe. Unfortunately, we know that isn’t always true, and our subconscious knows it too. There is no inherent value in my providing you with a hypno-affirmation like “You will never be assaulted,” or “Catcalling is now illegal, and you will never feel unsafe walking home from work again.” Still, you must decide you’re not going to let the darkness in the world limit you. You are worthy of a bold, beautiful life, and yet it often takes tremendous courage to claim what is inherently yours.
For many of my New Yorker clients, flying post-9/11 was a terrifying prospect, and understandably so. A suggestion such as “it’s safe to fly” or even “statistics say it’s safer to fly than drive” would have fallen completely flat. The subconscious would simply reject it outright because there is truth to the fear that if something goes wrong with a flight, it’s not the same as something going wrong when driving. We had to make the subconscious understand that the choice was between freedom or living a small life dictated by other people. The “reward” of flying again would have to become an act of defiance, an F-you to terrorism, a statement that they would never be allowed to win. This reframed flying from being something terrifying to being an act of courageous freedom. Sexual assault is terrorism. Allowing yourself to be healthy, sexy, to love your body, to live a bold, beautiful life is an act of defiance against those terrorists. By choosing your health, by choosing to love the body you have, you’re setting yourself free from their terror.
Do you see how this kind of thinking helps you to reclaim your power?
You can’t change anything with hypnosis but yourself. We can’t stop the world from being a dangerous place with hypnosis (until, of course, everyone takes responsibility for their own mental health, healing, and upgrading of their individual subconscious programming).
But when we decide to commit ourselves to living a big, bold, beautiful life, to not let the darkness in the world dim our light, we can claim what’s rightfully ours without subconscious fear. This week’s hypnosis recording is here to help you heal from the past and reclaim your power in the present moment. It is here to help you feel safe and empowered in your body as it continues to lose weight. It is here to help you feel calm, confident, and safe even if you begin to receive more attention from strangers or your spouse or anyone else. It is here to help you reclaim your birthright as a sovereign being to live a beautiful, bold life and to look and feel however you damn well please while you do it. You deserve this. You always have, and you always will.
Homework
A.Practice self-hypnosis three times a day, every day this week (right before breakfast, lunch, and dinner). Turn to page 20 for a reminder of how to do self-hypnosis or head to www.CloseYourEyesLoseWeight.com to follow along with a tutorial video.
Week 10 Hypno-affirmations—Unwanted Attention
•I reclaim my power.
•I am safe; I am protected.
•It is safe for me to lose weight.
•I alone am the boss of my body.
•I am perfect, whole, and complete.
•I am worthy of a beautiful, bold, and healthy life.
B.Listen to the “Week 10—Unwanted Attention” hypnosis recording every day for the next week here: www.CloseYourEyesLoseWeight.com.
C.Use your journal pages daily to stay motivated, log your progress, and determine which pick-me-up hypno-affirmations you’ll benefit from most.
Your body is yours and yours alone. Your life is yours and yours alone. Your power is yours and yours alone. You are worthy of respect, of love. Now that you’ve taken this massive step forward towards breaking open any and all cages through the healing of past trauma, it’s time to make sure your success can continue unimpeded. It’s time to defeat the fear of success. We’ve come this far. Let’s keep going. I believe in you.
62 Jennie G. Noll et al., “Obesity Risk for Female Victims of Childhood Sexual Abuse: A Prospective Study,” American Academy of Pediatrics 120, no. 1 (2007): e61–e67, https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/120/1/e61.